Cloud storage for 8TB of music files on an external HD

OP,

Solid state drives are reasonably reliable when used constantly so if they're attached to your computer and you're using them all the time.  This refreshes the memory with power. But for long-term storage, they are not. It's much better to have discs and discs are cheap. When not in use the data does not deteriorate over a few years. I always have a minimum of two.backups of everything. You can get an attachable USB drive with 8tb for $150. You can rotate the two extra ones or you can keep one attached all the time and put one in the closet. Sounds like you simply want long-term storage so just make two copies and two different discs and throw them in the closet.

You can also get raid boxes that attach to your computer or that attach to your network. I have both. I wouldn't do it. They can be useful, but they are complex. They have many different ways to configure them with different reliabilities and data requirements. For instance, you'll generally need twice as much data storage capacity than data. This just goes on and on and you can end up like me with 100 TB in your house.

Under no circumstances trust back up software that stuff is so unbelievably unreliable. It's amazing. Not only did I have trouble at home when I ended up in charge of data centers the backup software that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars didn't work until we played with it for months, so stay away from that stuff.

Absolutely keep it simple. Otherwise, you're gonna become an IT guy.

Also consider the concept of sunk cost. I understand the feeling of the value of this material so if you just make a couple copies, you'll be feel comfortable.

@kennyc 

I understand the dilemma. Absolutely skip ripping and saving. It’s incredibly time-consuming. I got rid of my CDs. They’re just taking them space and collecting dust.. That day is gone by. I ripped all my CDs over the last 20 years.  I never listened to them now, no reason to go there.

Quboz has half a million albums at high resolution albums.

Most of my high resolution discs are audiophile vinyl pressing. I find it in general.no sonic advantage of Audiophile pressing over what I end up finding on Quboz. I’ll play an Audiophile vinyl album and think OK. This can’t be that good on streaming. I pull up. The streaming version turns out it’s high definition version and sounds as good or better.

I have been a Microsoft user and advocate for most of my career. Apple was always a pain in the butt, however, Apple has changed the world has changed. Over the last few years I even offered apples to executives as opposed to Microsoft PCs.

I slowly move to the iPhone and then iPads as the came out which I use constantly and then the MacBook Pro. It is just simply stunning. I am now retired and I finally just got sick of Microsoft's constant upgrades in failure for communication software to work across platforms like email and messaging. They just.never worked when I needed them. Last year I finally moved from the PC to the over to a Mac studio. So my house now is 100% apple.

I absolutely love it. I can receive calls and messages on my MacBook or my office MAC PC. I use it right now when I’m sitting in front of the fire, I can’t advocate more. All the photos I take are  quickly available from every one of my devices so if I take a bunch of pictures, I come into the house they're on my MacBook or in my office computer. I can modify them then send them along if I wanted to give them away.

There’s a learning curve of course when you go from a PC to a Mac. Same concepts, different ways of getting into things Mac is easier to learn if you don’t know computers, but it’s a little frustrating when you go trying to find something until you get used to it. My life is so much easier with Apple I would never consider going back.

My attitude towards the cloud and personal data is fairly relaxed. First of all, one are so much more secure in an Apple environment than in a google environment (browsing / phone). It’s not funny. I am boring.  if you want to be somewhat secure, you need to be in an all Apple environment. Unless you are completely in a corporate secured Microsoft environment… and very few people are. Virtually anything you do in Google messaging emails all that stuff gets read and forward to databases some of it in summary form some of it specifically.

I was at Harvard for a seminar in 1989. They were demonstrating the advantage of UNIX. They asked one of the participants what their name was and their address from that within 15 seconds they told the group his phone numbers how much he owed on his house, where he worked, who his neighbors were,  how much they owed on their houses. Are you aWhat their cars were, their loan values. This was all available online in 1989 and the databases that are currently available on all your purchases and preferences are incredible so what are you hiding?  You certainly wanna make sure that any brokerage accounts and bank account accounts are very secure, use the double authentication always check your emails for unauthorized withdrawals. But other than that who cares if you got recipes from aunt Jane and why would they hack it?

Also, the thing you most have to worry about is what doje just did. By connecting the five governmental databases. They now know everything from what benefits you receive and have ever received, where you work,  how much money you make, what your party affiliations,  comments you made in Facebook or messages you sent to friends. There are no secrets. Within a few minutes, I could take that data and make a prioritize list by partee affiliation, what you’ve said on-line anywhere, where you live, how much you make, your health problems, etc. and do bad things with it.  I am a boring retired person so I suspect nobody cares.

Now, if one wants to be real OCD an offsite backup is needed. Having multiple copies in the same location means they all are gone if a fire, etc occurs. Find a trusted friend/neighbor with a safe. Make a set of backups and ask them to keep in their safe.

I backed up my website, code and database to a couple of thumb drives. Since by 2 friends are gun guys they have safes. They now each have a thumbdrive.

3 levels of storage. Son is working copy. Father is backup. Grandfather is offsite.

[[a reliable SSD for a somewhat similar price so why would I pay $48 a month forever]]

Just be sure to park your backup drive some other location than where the "live" data lives.  Otherwise a fire, flood, even electrical anomaly (if the backup drive is connected) could easily wipe out both the live data and the "backup".